Comments

You’re right about not surrendering our principles, but Jindal is close to right – we need to find a way to stop being identified as the party that only wants to let the rich keep their toys. You’re right about needing to be the Small Governement party or, better yet, the Liberty party.

That’s where we run in to trouble on social issues, because we do believe in sensible limits to Liberty that have been difficult to sell.

Of course, since we can’t seem to do anything about how we’re seen, I don’t know what to say.

My first comment ever! im 21 years old, and im in college and doing religious studies afternoon and night so I listen to the podcast. I love the aftershow and don’t know why Duane lets that Hugh guy open for him everyday. after taking a long form survey it was recommended that i vote for Gary Johnson, based on my economic views, but, I would never do so. after all, politics is the art of the possible so i’m a fanatically partisan republican, besides being a staunch social and foreign policy conservative. I could not disagree stronger with some of what Duane said. as i have learnt more about economics and read Richard Epstein, Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell I have moved closer to a libertarian view of things and believe soft libertarianish views should be engaged with on the right, even if only to be intelligently rejected. of particular relevance is views of crony capitalism and capricious distortions in the market. Duane is definitely better than allowing Politico to contextualize and simplify the words of an unquestionable conservative. when Jindal points out that many loopholes will have to be eliminated on jets and other luxury items he was not going democrat lite and he was not recommending raising rates, he merely pointed out that the playing field should be as level as possible favoring no group in particular. further My biggest, and mostly, only problem with Romney was when he said that he plans on looking out for the middle class, which Duane echoed in his little speech about GOP planks. this is horrible government should not be “pro” anything it should be as neutral as possible! The democrats are the party of the entrenched status quo. just look at the minimum wage which Richard Epstein points out helps the working poor at the expense of the very poor. while things like permanent monopolies, Thomas Sowell points out,are the exclusive province of the government. Progressivism is the project of capriciously picking winners and losers based on political calculations, or more high minded, but no less suspect “rationalism”, conservatism is about keeping government out of the way, not allowing a tipping of the scales, or distorting the market to prevent the fairest, most practical basis for ordering society: merit. Of course, the job of the Republicans is to take a truly radical agenda, and package it in such a way, as to remain amenable to the moderate, and cautious, inclinations of the American public. Conservatism is the empowerment of the individual against the stultifying, incompetent, bureaucratic indifference of government. preserving tax loopholes does not accomplish that goal.

as i replied to kalman in his email to me, my argument was not so much that we don’t need to close loopholes and simflify the tax code. we do. my argument was that jindal just threw in, rhetorically speaking, with the class warfare people on the left that want to make the wealthy, who also happen to be job creators, the bogeyman. i still don’t believe we’ll convince anyone on the left we’re sincere that we really mean it now – we hate the rich, too. second, it doesn’t change the equation. the government, no matter how we grow it, cannot produce a robust, thriving, job creating economy. that’s what the private sector is for, and we should hold it up, not snipe at it because it seems to be all the fashion now.

I’ll be covering Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech on today’s program with an emphasis in hours two and three. In the first hour I am using my time in the Silicon Valley on the campus of Stanford at the Hoover Institution to feature the work of Shared-X by having one of its founders John Denniston join me in the studio for the first hour of today’s program. […]

There are a couple of scandals brewing around Hillary Clinton. One, her use of private email when SoS, is front page NYT. (Which, by the way, may be far more significant than just the preservation of documents for historical purposes.) The other scandal, far less covered, surrounds the Clinton Foundation’s willingness to accept donations from foreign gove […]